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Infiltrators

11 enero, 2015
por admin

Infiltrators is an installation that takes its cue from the common police
tactic of infiltrating riots to spy on and eventually arrest rioters.
On display is a series of sketch-like drawings of known police
infiltrators. Spanish law prohibits showing or using photographs of
police infiltrators—despite the fact that they operate in public and
thus can be (accidently) photographed—by anyone documenting the
riots, because the authorities believe such actions will compromise
the infiltrators’ safety. The distribution of photographs of protestors,
however, is not illegal. The outfits worn by the police infiltrators are
based on standardized or stereotyped “models” of rioters that have
permeated the cultural imaginary for many years. On the wall are a
series of framed engravings of rioters from the end of the nineteenth
century that gives a historical perspective to the production of such
models. The engravings connect with a video that deconstructively
demonstrates software used by the contemporary gaming industry
to sculpt characters, including “bad” ones such as rioters. The video
shows how the workings of the software mimic the ways in which
traditional sculptors shaped their material. Another component of
the installation features sketches of rioters from games, as if they
were sketches from classical sculptures or simply sculptures in their
own digital right. In a montage of clips from the Internet, a second
video shows how these models are applied to game action that depicts
violent confrontations between police and public. The clips are
juxtaposed with footage of actual confrontations, encouraging reflection
on the relationship between what is happening in the game
and what is happening in the streets. The different material testifies
to the antagonistic construction of reality that the police and video
games take part in. But as documentary footage of rioters occupying
a building in Barcelona and raising a pirate flag on a rooftop reminds
us, the rioters themselves are constructing a different reality.

English

Glossarĭum, 2014

11 enero, 2015
por admin

Unfiltered access to knowledge in the digital realm of the Internet
is merely an illusion. Every piece of information obtained online
has been processed by a machine and its algorithmic procedures.
Most people probably do not pay any attention to this filtering, but
even those who do have no way of understanding the logic behind
the procedures. The algorithm responsible for the filtering remains
hidden and obscure and therefore all the more powerful. Glossar˘ıum
points to one of the most widespread yet disguised of these filtering
machines: the Google search engine. By performing an image
search on words taken from Friedrich Engel’s discussions of science
from a Marxist standpoint in the unfinished manuscript Dialectics
of Nature (1883; first published 1925), Glossar˘ıum shows how Google
Search conceptualizes political concepts in misleading, strange, and
absurd ways. Moreover, the work gives visitors access to the actual
manuscript through images of the search embedded in a QR code.
The work thereby reverses the procedure and uses Google Search as a
visual interface to a discussion that is critical of authorities such as
Google Search. The work suggests that filtering can be appropriated
and used as a means of liberation rather than as a means of control.
The work is also accessible online at www.glossarium.danielandujar.org.

English

Not Found, 1000 Case Studies, 2014

11 enero, 2015
por admin

Not Found, 1000 Case Studies is an installation consisting of empty
white vitrines and ten boxes with one thousand photographs. Initially,
this might resemble the well-known modernist gesture of clearing
the gallery space of images and objects in the name of dematerialized
art. However, as the photographs numbered from one to one
thousand and stocked in the boxes indicate, the iconoclastic gesture
of the installation is a different one. Appropriating standardized
mock-up images used by advertising agencies, Daniel G. Andújar has
inserted computer error messages in the areas normally reserved for
commercial messages. The result is a visual dead-end (or maybe a
liberated zone?) and creates a strange, confusing overlap between
the information politics of the analog and digital worlds. With the
spread of LED screens in urban spaces, this overlap might soon be
the new reality. The infrastructure of publicity is rapidly changing as
new digital media emerge, and the visual character of any given city
will soon be programmed and shaped by agencies in remote places.
Site-specific billboards will become integrated into the global data
network, enforcing new mechanisms of control as well as opening
up new possibilities for hacking both the billboards and the messages
they display.

English

Notitĭa

11 enero, 2015
por admin

Two plasma screens—one for English and one for Spanish—display
news headlines from a selection of online media. The headlines continuously
change as a computer working in real time finds new headlines.
Under each headline is a section of text taken from a collection
of one hundred of the books in Daniel G. Andújar’s private (computer)
library. The selections are automatically chosen by a computer algorithm
each time a new headline is displayed.
The books in the collection relate to contemporary critical theory
by authors such as Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Slavoj
Žižek, who have been instrumental to the development of Andújar’s
work. The selections also serve as “answers” to the news. Notit˘ıa conceives
news as a question rather than a fact and emphasizes the importance
of seriously reflecting upon rather than passively consuming it.
The pace of changing headlines is often so fast that reflection is impossible.
Notit˘ıa thus shows them at a slower pace and offers tools and
vocabulary with which to engage the news critically.
The work updates a strong art-historical tradition of dealing with
the significance of news. Seminal work by artists such as Hans Haacke
and David Lamelas in the 1970s presented real-time news in the exhibition
space in order to demonstrate that the institution was not an
isolated aesthetic sphere but a structure inherently connected with
the surrounding society. Andújar develops this tradition further by
using the exhibition space as a space for reconceptualization and
reflection that is often impossible when news is displayed in its regular
formats.
The work is also accessible online at www.e-leaks.org.

English

Leaders, 2014

11 enero, 2015
por admin

Completely covering the walls in the room, Leaders is a massive compilation
of found images that uses the faces of historical and contemporary
political leaders—with or without their consent—to promote a
certain cause or product. From Adolf Hitler with an afro wig to Fidel
Castro as a cake, the images are bizarre, and the installation comes
to resemble a baroque curiosity cabinet. The wall is a direct reflection
of a contemporary society heavily polluted by images and an
excess of information that leaves little room for analysis. Moreover,
it reflects the transgressive tactics and increasing political power of
advertising as well as the disillusioning mutation of the face of politics.
Like avant-garde advertising, it challenges the culture of political
correctness. However, it does so in the name of market shares
rather than social progress, and in its use of archival material it not
only turns history into a joke but also decontextualizes and depoliticizes
it.
The installation also demonstrates how the focus of politicians
and politics in general has shifted from debate to publicity, from
arguments in parliament to visibility in the media. Politicians have
become as highly invested in the popularity contest of celebrity culture
as sports and rock stars. What is cancelled out or at least dramatically
narrowed by this shift of focus is the space for democratic
discussion of political principles. In its place a theatrical stage spotlighting
the personality of politicians has been erected.

Intervention

Let’s democratise democracy, 2011

11 enero, 2015
por admin

Let’s Democratise Democracy is an ongoing work that TTTP has installed
at numerous sites around Europe, from Barcelona to Belgrade.
The basic element of the work is the eponymous slogan printed in
the local language, black print on a yellow background on posters
of varying sizes that are either hung in or carried around the urban
space as a site-specific performance. The politically loaded places
where the posters have been presented include the Ministry of Defense
in the city of Belgrade, which the forces of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization bombed in 1999; Tito’s nuclear bunker in
Bosnia-Herzegovina; the production facility and residential area of
Uralmash in Yekaterinburg; and a refugee camp in Western Sahara
(as part of the 2012 ARTifariti festival of art and human rights,
which aimed to give visibility and voice to the Sahrawi people). In
one version of the work enacted in Barcelona, Murcia, and Alicante
on May 1, 2011 (International Workers’ Day) and May 21, 2011 (the
day before the general election), the message was communicated on
a banner attached to a small airplane flying along the coastline. The
airplane and banner, with cityscapes as a background, was filmed
from a second airplane, and people were encouraged to document
the banner’s route and upload material to an associated website; that
is, to participate in the creation of a collective work.
Just as Johnny Cash swore he would wear black “as long as there
are people suffering,” TTTP will continue to enact Let’s Democratise
Democracy as long as the principles of constitutional democracy are
being compromised by those in power. The work thus serves as a reminder
that a nominal democracy is no real democracy and that the
process of democratization is continuous and should involve the people,
not just the politicians.

English

Objects of desire, 2010

11 enero, 2015
por admin

A model of a glass building sits in a model of a hilly landscape onto
which is printed ¤100 and ¤500 bills. The model refers to an actual
corruption scandal in the northern Catalonian countryside involving
businessman Fèlix Millet i Tusell, who for more than thirty years was
the president of the Palau de la Música Catalana (Palace of Catalan
Music) and member of close to one hundred foundations. In 2009
he resigned after admitting his involvement in the “disappearance”
of several million euros of public money, the biggest ever corruption
scandal involving a cultural institution. The money was partly
used to build an opera-like environment in his private residence—
which the media called a “casa billet” (“bill house”). Tusell’s residence
is the symbolic reference for the model. The work thus addresses the
well-documented culture of corruption in Spanish politics, a culture
that undermines the democratic system and destabilizes the economy
to the detriment of every citizen. The new generation of culture-promoting
politicians have exchanged their political ideals and visions
for banal consumerist greed and pretention. They spend the stolen
money on luxury objects such as Louis Vuitton bags and Rolex watches
to flash their illegally acquired upper-class status. The model was
originally shown along with a series of lightboxes displaying advertisements
for some of these objects.

English

A Brick Culture, 2004

11 enero, 2015
por admin

A Brick Culture consists of nine audio interviews that Daniel G.
Andújar conducted with people who have participated, at a governmental
level, in the corruption surrounding construction and urban
developments in Spain. They are the protagonists of the so-called
brick culture that has haunted the country since the beginning
of the 2000s and has radically transformed the look of the land.
Agricultural areas have been invaded by housing projects, and coastal
towns have been expanded to accommodate more tourists (on behalf
of the existing population). For one five-year period Spain was the
biggest consumer of cement in Europe. Land has been revalued and
prices speculatively increased. No names are mentioned in the interviews,
and the voices of the interviewees have been distorted, like
witnesses in a police case. They explain their simple techniques to
get to the politicians and paint a clear picture of a government that
is for sale if you pay the right person. Moreover, as one interviewee
says, “Complicity is absolute.” A grotesque fact revealed by the interviews
is that during Spain’s first two years in the Eurozone, from
1999 to 2001, nearly 43 million ¤500 notes—equal to ¤21.331 billion—
went into circulation in Spain. That amounts to 35 percent of
all the money in circulation, yet no bank ever saw these notes since
most were laundered and moved in suitcases.
Originally the audio interviews were exhibited with photographs
of golf courses and residential buildings, the same kind of imagery
used by the corruptors to hypnotize the public and generate a flow
of money. When the interviews were first exhibited, they caused a
media scandal, and the identity of one of the politicians was somehow
revealed. Today that politician is imprisoned.

English

e-projects, 2001

11 enero, 2015
por admin

Representative democracy arguably has an inbuilt mechanism that
works against its very foundation. The common understanding of
a well-functioning democracy is based on discussions and negotiations
among different political parties. However, if one group of parties
in agreement reaches absolute majority in the parliament, they
do not have to discuss or negotiate anything. Such coalitions can
simply pass any law they want without including parties that might
disagree with their proposals. Such was the political situation in the
region of Valencia around the year 2001, and one area where this
situation manifested itself most significantly was the cultural arena.
Spectacular projects were commissioned to promote the region—
including to its own citizens—and to create the idea that the region
was thriving and on the forefront of the new experience economy. In
reality these projects were the products of scams, nepotism, and bad
judgment and caused huge deficits. e-valencia.org was a response to
the situation; it took the form of an online platform that encouraged
and allowed the public to discuss the cultural politics of the region.
Moreover, the identities of the contributors were automatically deleted
from the server the moment their comments were posted, making
it impossible for authorities to identify the contributors. The local
public was thereby empowered with the means to openly discuss cultural
politics without fear of persecution. The solution was radical,
but when democracy is not democratic, alternative methods need to
be applied to secure it. TTTP would later produce similar platforms
for Madrid, Seville, and Barcelona, and e-valencia.org was featured
in an issue of the magazine Mono edited by Daniel G. Andújar.

English

Access To Technology is a Human Right ™, 1996

11 enero, 2015
por admin

The stickers all read, “Access to Technology Is a Human Right.” TTTP
launched this radical statement in 1996 and has used it as guiding
principle ever since. Neither money nor power but simply being a
human being entitles you to have access to technology. Referencing
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ratified by the United
Nations in 1949, the slogan implies that technology is as important
as, for instance, water for human survival in contemporary society.
People in the Western world commonly understand that everyone has
access to technology. However, large numbers of people remain without
adequate technology to actively participate in society. Therefore,
as stated in the documentation for Street Access Machine, TTTP is
“aimed at people in the so-called Third World as well as the homeless,
orphaned, expatriated or unemployed, at fringe groups, runaways,
immigrants, alcoholics, drug addicts, people suffering from
mental dysfunctions and any other categories of ‘undesirables,’ at
all those without social ties and unable to find a safe place to live,
at all those who have to beg in order to survive.” The statement reflects
the political understanding of technological society promoted
and engaged with by TTTP and makes explicit the company’s commitment
to challenge the power structures that haunt this society.

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